FLATWOODS AND LIGHTERKNOTS

Chapter II

 

THE PINES

 

 

Jimmy has always been able to recall the day he first became a conscious person.  As confused as things can be for an eighteen-month-old child, he nevertheless became suddenly and acutely aware of the fact that he was a separate entity from all the strange things and sights that were occurring around him.  The first thoughts that began to take substance in his mind were like a menagerie of all his senses as they simultaneously tested the faculties of his sub-juvenile mentality.  It happened at what appeared to him as some kind of special event.  New thoughts were feeding his callow brain with lasting mental pictures, which he would later recognize as a collection of reflections having to do with horses, music, and war. 

 

Horses appeared to Jimmy’s neophyte consciousness as enormous hairy things that had long legs and emitted a constant stream of wet slobber from somewhere above him.  Music was an exciting yet noisy commotion that seemed to be coming from a group of people who were all dressed alike and carrying big brass and silver colored objects.  War was some mysterious thing that grown people were talking very excitedly about but which seemed to be going on in some place where Jimmy was unable to see or imagine.  All he understood was that everyone was talking about going to some place called war, and he wanted to go there too.  At such a tender age, there is only so much information that a small child’s brain can assimilate.  That is probably one of the reasons why little children cry so much.  It is also a practical reason as to why children should be under constant adult supervision to prevent them from acting on their first impulses. 

 

Those first mental pictures that were captured forever in Jimmy’s mind came to him during a time of national uncertainty and preparation for a coming conflict between many nations, a conflict that was to be known as World War II.  As an army brat whose first cognitive thoughts were formulated in a military environment in which he was born, Jimmy saw and heard many things that children born to civilian parents will never see or hear and, most likely, will never have an opportunity to experience.  His father was a horse cavalryman and one of the most loyal to have ever served in the horse cavalry, a special breed of men with centuries of history behind them. 

 

Before he was old enough to be responsible for his own carelessness, Jimmy spent the war years and his youth growing up on his family’s old homestead that everyone in the family always referred to as the Pines.  The Pines still sits nestled deep in the pine forests and cypress swamp covered coastal plains of Southeast Georgia.  And although it is now deserted, as it has been for a long time, it waits for a new era of occupancy and a new coat of paint. 

 

The Pines was a place where hard work and reading was mandatory.  And it is there where Jimmy’s memories often draw him back to the first book he was able to read from cover to cover without adult assistance.  That first solo reading adventure sparked urges in him that, even today, prod him on to discover and do things not yet experienced.  As he turned each page of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, he dreamed of how wonderful it would be if only he could be so lucky as to be stranded on a desert island with someone with a name like Friday.  By the time he was twelve years old he had read most of the works of Dickens, Poe, Stevenson, Huxley, and many of the works of other classical writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  During his awkward years of puberty, Jimmy even explored the bizarre literary worlds of Henry Miller and his offbeat literary friends who used to hang out around the hotels and sidewalk cafes in Paris near Cluney Square. 

 

After his evening reading sessions and before falling asleep, Jimmy would write to himself about some of the places he had been reading about.  Many years later, when he was a young soldier stationed in Germany, he managed to finagle a leave of absence and travel to France.  He spent most of his time there sitting at a table in front of a Parisian sidewalk cafe, sipping Pernod, and reading Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and a copy of the first English translation of Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. 

 

Most of Jimmy’s favorite authors wrote about the adventures of fictitious others as seen through the eyes of yet other fictitious others.  Envy bears heavy on the soul, and their writings made Jimmy more envious of the authors than did the characters they created with such marvelous strokes of their pens.  Although they gave their human representations literary breaths of life that made them all seem real and exciting, Jimmy believed that the lives of their imaginary creations could never match those of their creators.  He was sure the ghosts of all the authors who had been sharing his room with him for so many years had once been real living people themselves, people who had stories of their own.  He even supposed that the authors had done many of the things themselves that they had been giving credit to their fictional characters for doing, and that they had sought out difficult circumstances just so they could create and write about special people to serve as their literary stand-ins. 

 

The walls of the living room, den, and hallway of the big house where Jimmy lived from his fifth birthday until graduating from high school were all lined from the floors to ceilings with long shelves filled with hundreds of books his family had collected over the years.  Not many children get to grow up in their own private library.  Even his little bedroom in the rear of the big house was a brothel of virgin literature.  And with the desire of a Satyr, he bedded as many as possible.  He read much on the subjects of government, religion, and philosophy before leaving home at the urgings of a curiosity about a world that had been conceived and born from his nightly liaisons with books of various covers and titles. 

 

As he became more engrossed in reading about places he had never seen and people he had never met, envy faded and admiration grew for his belletristic companions.  He could hardly wait until he could leave Claxton High School back in the dustbin of his memories, shed the official bonds of his juvenile existence, and follow in what he was sure were footprints into his future that had been laid down especially for him by his literary friends.  Even though he knew he might never be as famous as his old back-room book buddies, he was to experience such a kaleidoscope of life’s adventures and pleasures that he would never again feel the need to be envious of another person. 

 

The Pines got its name from the tall grove of longleaf pine trees that still stand between the big house and the main road.  Those stately trees are a few of the last examples of the great virgin pines that once shaded the southern coastal plains before the days of sawmills and cottonseed.  Anyone who might wish to visit the old homestead today must pass through a double wrought-iron gate that opens to a cathedral of glistening and whispering pine trees.  Their huge brown trunks give the appearance of Corinthian columns as they rise to support a majestic ceiling of shimmering greenery. 

 

The ground below the giant sun-freckled shadow of the pine grove is covered with layer upon layer of rusty colored pine needles.  The constant shedding of the pine needles keeps a fresh and deep carpet of straw around the azaleas, day lilies, spirea, and wisteria that grows in sculptured clumps throughout the grove.  It is a place that is perfectly suited for whippoorwills that like to build their nests on the ground amongst the camouflaging straw.  This ancient mountain of greenery still stands like a platoon of soldiers guarding a tomb of memories.  And although the pine trees now look like a formation of old battle-scarred veterans who are missing a few of their ranks, it continues to serve as a visual navigation aid for pilots flying east and west to and from Savannah. 

 

The old black woman who helped care for Jimmy during the first few years of his life spoke perfect English.  She would scold him every time he brought into the house what she referred to as “field-hand talk.”  Eloise was a stern yet kind and tender matriarch of the descendants of slaves who once worked the fields that belonged to Jimmy’s great grandfather on his paternal grandmother’s side of the family.  Eloise would read to Jimmy and his brother every Sunday afternoon when the grown-ups were having their weekly adult gathering and the children had already been seen and now were not to be heard.  She was wise beyond her education, and she instilled in Jimmy the seeds of respect that would grow into an admiration and appreciation for the earned achievements of the individual human mind.

 

Jimmy has only a few lingering yet persistent memories of Eloise’s mother and father, Josh and Martha Murphy.  His most vivid recollection of Josh is of him driving a mule and wagon and speaking in a very deep but kindly voice.  There was usually another white-bearded old man with him who wore the first wooden peg leg Jimmy had ever seen.  When riding in Josh’s wagon, the man would sit in an old armchair that had been nailed to the floorboard of the wagon.  His peg leg would be propped up on one of the sides of the wagon in a way that made the stubby end of his wooden leg jut out over the side of the wagon, like a small cannon on a gunboat.  His walking cane would always be hanging on the end of his peg leg about where his ankle used to be.  The cane would swing back and forth in rhythm with the sauntering gait of Josh’s mule.  Jimmy’s most memorable picture of Martha is of her sitting next to Josh on top of their wagon, using a giant pillow for a seat cushion, wearing a large red brimmed bonnet, and singing gospel hymns in a voice that could drive Mahalia Jackson into vocal retreat. 

 

Every Sunday morning, Josh and Martha would come riding down the white sandy road in front of the big house.  The two of them would be perched high on the seat of their wagon as their old mule meandered from one side of the road to the other, tugging them along on the way to listen to Preacher Stewart burn holes through the souls of his little congregation.  Jimmy knew it was only the breeze that was blowing through the tall pine trees, but those pine needles sure seemed to dance in resonance with Martha’s operatic vibrato.  It was a sight and sound to behold, one of those mental paintings from past times and past events that can only be captured and recorded in the memories of those who were lucky enough to have witnessed the presentations of the moment.  Such images are destined to be lost forever as they die with the death of the beholder. 

 

Before Jimmy was old enough to have a driver’s license he was driving a ten-wheeler truck working for his Uncle Wallace (named in honor of a famous Scotsman).  They would load the truck with watermelons or cantaloupes and maybe a few dozen three-pound bags of pecans.  Jimmy would drive the truck down to the coastal tidelands between Savannah and Kingsland where he would set up his “Watermelons and Pecans for Sale” sign on the side of US Highway 17.  While relaxing in an old discarded chair under the shade of a sprawling live oak tree, he would open one of the books that he always brought with him and wait for the tourists to pull over and buy his goods.  The tourists would stream down the highway in a convoy of cars that stretched up and down the highway as far as the eye could see, all headed for Florida.  The roof of every car would be stacked tall with layers of beach umbrellas, lawn chairs, and at least one ice chest.  Jimmy would sell the watermelons for thirty cents apiece or three for a dollar.  Maybe the tourists were just being kind to him, but they usually took the three for a dollar deal. 

 

Uncle Wallace would drive his pickup truck along his regular route and sell the watermelons to the people who lived on the banks of the tidal creeks, which were accessible only by narrow one-lane roads of loose white sand that were overhung by giant oak tree limbs draped in gray Spanish moss.  They always saved at least two watermelons to give to Mrs. Johnson who had several children living with her.  Mrs. Johnson was a very nice black lady who lived in Pinpoint, a small settlement of mostly clapboard houses on the outskirts of Savannah.  Several children were usually playing in her front yard, which she kept brushed clean with a homemade broom made of dead gall berry bushes bound together with bailing wire and tobacco twine.  The children were very well mannered, and one of them was named Clarence Thomas.

 

Uncle Wallace was a tee-totaling, non-smoking, often profane, and very outspoken atheist who did a lot for other people.  Jimmy once asked him why it was that he gave away perfectly good watermelons when he could have easily sold every one of them.  Uncle Wallace explained that kindness is something everyone needs, but kindness will turn to greed if it is not quickly passed along to someone else.  He cautioned, however, that we should be deliberately mindful of our kindness, because misplaced kindness and charity is welfare, which soon breeds contempt for the giver by the receiver and for the receiver by the giver.  He said that Mrs. Johnson understood the differences between kindness, charity, and welfare, and her acceptance and appreciation for the few gifts he was able to give her was an even greater gift to him.  For an atheist, Uncle Wallace was a fairly good preacher 

 

After Uncle Wallace and Jimmy had finished selling all their melons, they would drive over to the fish and shrimp docks near Richmond Hill, a little village south of Savannah that was founded by the automobile magnate, Henry Ford.  They would fill up the back of Uncle Wallace’s pick-up truck with a mixture of ice and fresh fish, shrimp, oysters, blue crabs, or any other seafood that might be in season.  They then hauled the dripping load of seafood back inland and sold it to the grocery stores and little seafood markets in Pembroke, Daisy, Claxton, Hagan, and Bellville.  Uncle Wallace was known as a thrifty businessman who didn’t like the idea that he might waste fuel by running an empty truck.  He was what people used to refer to as a ‘cash-and-carry’ man.  He even claimed to have never owned a checkbook, never paid a tax, and never charged a tax on anything that he sold. 

 

The automobile magnate, Henry Ford, came to Richmond Hill in the 1920’s and bought up most of the land south of the Ogeechee River delta where he soon began conducting his own private experiments in socialism and communal living.  His intentions were to turn Richmond Hill into a completely self-sufficient community that would be supported entirely by the industrious and cooperative nature of its citizens.  Of course that would all be accomplished under his personal tutelage and benevolent presence.  He quickly indentured the local population and furnished them with their own school, their own teachers, their own hospital, their own fields, their own timber forests, their own lumber mills, their own seafood industry, and their own everything that a good communist commune would ever need according to Karl Marx.  But he held the liens.  They soon began to have their problems too. 

 

It seems that when everything is made equally available to all people they soon become resentful of each other, and, soon after, they become unproductive.  When people are left to the mercy of their own devices, personal resentments, jealousies, ambitions, and desires for status, which are natural tendencies that exist in the human condition, they begin to breed competition and therefore productivity, which is the life-blood of capitalism and insurer of a nation’s freedom. 

 

Nevertheless, Mr. Ford was steadfast in his faith in the powers of social welfare.   He believed that, regardless of a person’s socioeconomic background, anyone can be placed in a significant or responsible position and, simply through such freely given opportunities, they will become enthusiastic and productive members of society.  In fact, his belief in the socialist utopian theory was so strong that he decided to take a family of the worst examples of breathing human flesh that were known to reside along the mouth of the Ogeechee River, move them to Detroit, and give them important jobs in his automobile factory.  They lasted only a few weeks before the entire family hitchhiked back to the muddy banks of the Ogeechee.  Today, the descendants of that experiment still live along the same tidal creeks where they lived before; still robbing crab traps by day and dragging tidal waters for illegal shrimp by night. 

 

Mr. Ford made a good cheap car but he was a miserable failure in the social sciences.  It is paradoxical how some people are so willing to vehemently condemn the extremes of others while at the same time defending and promoting their own favorite system of feudalism, socialism, or some other example of human slavery and oppression. 

 

It was the end of an era and the beginning of another when Henry Ford finally went back to Detroit to die and Richmond Hill began to live.  The old Ford home still stands on the south bank of the Ogeechee River where it remains a constant reminder of how fleeting glory can be when it takes the bride of arrogance.  After many years of intermittent vacancies and several changes in ownership, it was an ironic twist of fate when the old place was purchased by an Arabian oil sheik that owed his riches to the world’s thirst for petroleum products brought on by Henry Ford’s automobiles.  After the war in the Persian Gulf and subsequent diminished effectiveness of the Middle Eastern oil cartel, the old Ford house and its expansive grounds and gardens were again returned to the marketplace of the people. 

 

The old Ford home and its surrounding grounds are now a community of riverside homes that are owned by instantly rich dot-comers, money market speculators, and a few Hollywood movie personalities.  These new strangers to the banks of the Ogeechee were so afraid of the local inhabitants that they erected a twenty-foot high earthen wall and fence around their new community in order to keep prying eyes out and protect the new residents in their new but probably temporary xenophobic existence. 

 

Many wonderful Americans, who are finally realizing their dreams, now populate the area around the old Ford plantation, the mouth of the Ogeechee, along the Belfast River, and up and down the banks of other tidal waters of coastal Georgia.  They are a people who no longer have to hope for someone else to give them a future; they made their own.  God bless America. 

 

Jimmy’s grandfather was born a just few weeks after the Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, and he was almost four years old when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.  He was born in Bulloch County but raised by his grandfather who lived in Liberty County on the old family land grant that was named The Isle of Patmos.  The original land grant of several hundred acres along the banks of the Canoochee River had been deeded to his great grandfather in payment for his services as a Captain of Cavalry in the famous Sparta Regiment.  The founder and first commander of that Revolutionary War regiment was Colonel John Thomas but later commanded by Colonel Benjamin Roebuck.  The regiment is now commonly referred to as Roebuck’s Regiment. 

 

An additional tract of land adjoining the original grant was later granted to the Captain’s son in payment for his services in the War of 1812.  It would be another one hundred and fifty years before the United States Government would take all the land back and build an artillery firing range for a new military camp, which is now called Fort Stewart.  Fort Stewart is one of the largest contiguous land mass military installations the United States, and it continues to command the pine forests, swamps, and riverbanks where Jimmy’s grandfather spent his youth.  The only signs still remaining, and which are indicative of previous human habitation, on the Isle of Patmos is a note on a military map and an old cemetery.  The map marks the site of a once active ferry crossing over the Cannochee River that was operated by the Captain during his retirement. The cemetery has only one grave marker, that of the Captain. 

 

It was only recently that the original record of the land survey and transfer of the Liberty County grant was discovered.  It revealed that the great-great-great grandfather of Jimmy’s wife had conducted the land survey for his great-great-great grandfather.  The next time the two family names would appear again on one document would be on their marriage license.  It would have been a wonderful thing had Jimmy’s grandfather lived long enough to be able to hold both documents in his hands and experience the merging of old memories and the beginning of new ones. 

 

It was in August of 1958, less than a week before Mr. Jim’s ninety-eighth birthday and only a few months after he became bedridden.  Jimmy was packing a few of his belongings and getting ready to catch a bus to Savannah where he would be inducted into the United States Army.  When it was time for him to leave he went to his grandfather’s room to bid him farewell.  Jimmy could tell that it bothered Mr. Jim knowing they would no longer be taking their walks together through the flatwoods and oak ridges.  Mr. Jim took Jimmy’s hand and, speaking in his old familiar and knowing manner, said, "Jimmy, I know you want to go away and see the world now, but one day you will come back home to stay.” 

 

“How do you know that, Grandpa?” 

 

“You have always talked and dreamed about people and places that you were reading about in all those books of yours.  Those memories are still fresh in your mind, but the memories of the people and the place you are now leaving were your first memories.  Those memories will always be your strongest ones, and they will pull on your soul until your body returns.” 

 

That was the last conversation Jimmy had with his grandfather.  In 1959, Jimmy was stationed with the 8^th Airborne Infantry Division in Germany and on a trip to Luxembourg to participate in a military ceremony in honor of General George S. Patton.  General Patton died in December of 1945 and was buried in an American military cemetery on a hill overlooking Luxembourg City.  His grave was placed at the head of a great formation of white crosses; each cross marking the grave of one of the thousands of soldiers who had served in his command and had been killed during World War II.  It was when Jimmy was standing next to General Patton’s grave that he received the news informing him that his grandfather had died.  Mr. Jim was almost a hundred years old.  Jimmy sat down by the grave of that great warrior, defender of liberty, and protector of the weak, and he wondered where it is that great minds go after their fragile bodies die. 

 

Someone once said that it is impossible to go back home again.  But it seems reasonable and proper that it be an unpardonable sin against the memories of those we leave behind to never have a desire to return.  The overpowering longing to leave people and places one loves and venture to places visited only in the galleries of an imaginative mind can be a dichotomy of emotions.  Such conflict must be resolved by keeping alive the hope of returning, maybe someday when time is more permissive. 

 

Forgetting the past might be possible and even desirable for people who have unpleasant memories of the people they once knew and of the place from where they came.  But that would be impossible for people who are fortunate to have fond remembrances.  Good memories of past places and past relationships are things that people should pass along to their children so they can cherish them and use them as reference points and foundations for building their own futures and memories. 

 

General Patton chose to rest with the people he loved most, a place where he can serve forever with his troops who had given him the memories that he treasured most during his last days.  One day too, Jimmy will return to where his old memories dwell, and he too will rest among the people and the place he knows and loves, a place called the Pines.